DAY 2: Just one more hill, honey...

Early the next morning the sun streamed through the windows as Erin excitedly roused me from my sleep in order to see the early morning sun over the caldera. The view was even more astounding that it had appeared at night. Most people would have stood there for hours unable to peel their eyes away from the sight that met our eyes. But I was really really tired so I turned right back around and went back to sleep for an hour.

We spend the rest of the morning exploring our little area of Oia. The white houses littering the side of the cliff punctuated every now and then with the blue dome of a church left use both futilely attempting to not take the same pictures over and over again. We found a small bakery Rose had recommended to use the night before and which we would frequent for a cheap breakfast the remainder of the week.

Finally we caught a bus to town of Fira. Walking around, I realized two things: there were a whole lot of touristy shops and we were destined to visit each and every one of them. Multiple times. As Fira is also the main town on Santorini, the cruise ships dock there and release hundreds of crazy American and European tourists onto streets. Yes, I realize we were also American tourists but at least we were staying on the island for the week. These people got dropped off for an afternoon and went on a rampage.

Consulting our guide book (yes, we were those people), we found a little café to eat lunch in. As our waiter told us how their menu was solely in Greek, I couldn’t tell whether he was taking great pride in their traditionalism or whether he showing great disdain for the two damned tourists he now was forced to translate the menu for. Either way we both ordered lamb and potatoes in a lemon sauce with a Mythos and had a delicious lunch.

According to our guide book, Fira is located only 8 km from Oia and that it highly recommended the walk inbetween along the Caldera for getting some great pictures. As 8 km is only about 5 miles, Erin and I thought it’d be a fun time to take that walk. The walk started out with us having to navigate a maze of criss-crossing paths and stairs as we attempted to get out of the town of Fira. About 2 hours later found us thanking above for a small restaurant pretty much in the middle of nowhere about halfway between Fira and Oia where we could sit down and have a water and a beer and rest. During this time we also starting to worry that perhaps the guide book had been a little off about the distance. An hour later there wasn’t even a path and we were trailblazing along volcanic rock and admiring, with a little unease, all the obvious rockslides that had occurred on the hillside and thinking yes indeed, the book was definitely wrong about the distance. An hour later we were climbing up a damn mountain screaming very very bad things about the book. On top of the mountain we found a church (the 3^rd we’d seen since we began our hike) and were able to see the entire path we had walked as well as the remaining path to Oia. An hour later, tired, sore, with rocks in our shoes and Erin’s bladder having to burst for the past 2 hours, we finally made it back to our room. We figured the true distance we had walked was much closer to 14 miles. And we were very very hungry.

Our guide book (yes, we were still listening to the guide book. I often wonder now why I hadn’t set the thing on fire at this point), mentioned that the small fishing village of Amoudi, 300 steps below Oia, was a great place for dinner and to watch the sunset. We stopped off at the local supermarket to get a bottle of wine for later that night and to get directions to Amoudi. The clerk pointed us down the road and told us to follow it all the way to the village.

We started walking down the winding road hoping to get to Amoudi by sunset. As we continued winding, the village was not appearing but the sun was getting much lower. After walking for 20 minutes we saw two tiny, not exactly in tip top condition restaurants with gigantic signs advertising the best sunset view on the island. Obviously there had been a bit of an exaggeration there for when we got close to the two restaurants we saw both of them had closed down and been boarded up. So much for that. In the end we just found a spot on the side of the road over looking the caldera and spent the sunset resting there. It was a beautiful sunset even if we weren’t seated at a comfortable restaurant table.

At this point we were too tired and sore to continue looking for Amoudi and decided just to hike back up the hill and eat dinner in Oia. As Erin had pretty much torn her feet to blistered pieces by now, this proved to be a long long walk to the top. We finally just sat down at a local grill and had an extremely delicious dinner. I had some sausages while Erin ordered the chicken. The traditional dessert there is also watermelon. I found it quite delicious while Erin looked at me like I was crazy for eating it.

After this we retired to our room having walked an uncomfortably large amount. We enjoyed a glass of wine (which proved to be a rather cheap, but at that point quite satisfying, table wine) and slipped off to bed thinking wow, we got a lot of great pictures and I can’t feel my feet anymore.

DAY 1: We're on our way to Greece. What could possibly go wrong?

So after a morning of mocking and goodbyes and getting Tom hopelessly lost…twice, Erin and I found ourselves on the way to the airport. Our flight was leaving Washington Reagan for NY JFK from which we would catch our flight to Athens and then Santorini.

Tom dropped us off for our 3:30 flight at 2:30 and we checked our baggage (Erin’s bag literally making the weight limit by half a pound) and proceeded to security. That was when we discovered that our flight was actually at 3 and I was just a complete jackass who had screwed up the times. So at 2:50 we found ourselves sprinting through the airport to the gate. At 3:40 we found ourselves still sitting on the runway due to traffic in NY. At 5:20 we found ourselves sprinting through JFK trying to catch our 5:40 international flight to Athens. JFK is a really big airport. Thank God for our Athens flight also being delayed. Finally at 6:30 we were on board a plane for Athens. There had to have been a less stressful way.

As we waited for our near empty flight to take off, Erin thought up a great idea. Why not mention to the flight attendant that we’re on our honeymoon and see if they can bump us up to first class? So Don Juan de la Nooch that I am, I strolled on up and concocted some BS story about wanting to surprise my new wife by seeing if we could get bumped up to first class. She told me that once they got everyone on, she’d see what she could do. As we took off 20 mins later, I sat in my coach seat thinking horrible horrible thoughts about this total witch of a flight attendant who didn’t even bother to come back and tell they didn’t have room. I mean I wasn’t asking for much. Just a yes or no, but no, this eff-ing cow of a woman couldn’t even give me an “I’m sorry, we’re full.” Damn Greeks.

So naturally when this woman came back with a bottle of champagne for Erin and I, profusely apologizing that there weren’t enough seats up front for us to sit together, I realized that I’m a complete and utter a**hole and deserved to be kicked in the nuts repeatedly.

Thus began our vacation to Greece.

The great thing about international flights is that one, the food is usually excellent, and two, the alcoholic beverages are free. Which granted, for how much you end up paying for a 10 hour flight, is how it should be. But it definitely helps those 10 hours pass more quickly. The other thing is in this wonderful age of technology, you get your own personal video monitor on which there are multiple channels. They offered 3 movies playing on repeat throughout the flight so you could just keep watching them back to back. The kink in that plan comes when the movies offered are Herbie Fully Loaded, Armageddon and some weirdass Greek animated kid dragon movie.

Jeff’s 3 quick thoughts on Armageddon:

1. How the hell did they get such a great cast of supporting actors together?
2. How the hell did anyone ever think this movie was any good?
3. Man, those mid-90’s special effects look pretty damn awful today.

Athens airport, for all its Olympic renovation, isn’t the most amazing place in the world to kill 6 hours. Erin slept. I listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on the iPod. I also had time to notice some disturbing trends in Greek fashion.

Jeff’s Observations of Greek fashion:

1. Tight long sleeve T-shirts with American company logos are in
2. The mullet is making a comeback.
3. Full jump suits are also suitable as long as they display those American corporate logos
4. No seriously, the mullet. It’s everywhere.

I have to say, the flight to Santorini was pretty damn cool. Thankfully it was only 45 mins long but we flew over the Aegean sea and you just watch all the Greek islands passing beneath you. Santorini is a tiny airport. We got off the plane and boarded the bus to take us to the terminal. The bus drove us maybe 50 feet. I could’ve walked faster.

As it was dark we didn’t get a great view of the island as the taxi drove us to Oia at the other end of the island to our hotel. But we did make a stop in the town of Fira. The taxi driver had to pick up his wife who was shopping. Seriously, the taxi driver stopped in the middle of driving us to the hotel to pick up his wife. Welcome to Greece.

Our host Rose (who was a gaunt, white haired, 50 year old man) met us out front to help us drag our bags to the office. I’ll admit I was a little worried as we wound through these rather dingy looking alleyways wondering where the hell are we? The we stepped out onto the main street overlooking the caldera and all my fears were completely silenced. The caldera is the crescent ring of the island overlooking the sea caused by a volcanic explosion thousands of years ago. It’s basically a cliff which drops some 100 feet to the water below. The main part of the village of Oia is built into the side of these cliffs. Perhaps not the most stable place to build a village (as proved by an earthquake 50 years ago that leveled the place) but damn if it isn’t quite possible the most spectacular view I’ve ever seen in my life.

After dragging our bags down a series of labyrinthine stairs we reached our villa built into a cave in the cliff’s side. Spacious with a giant living room, bedroom and bathroom as well as a small kitchen it was just perfect for a nice little getaway. The villa lacked a TV or radio. The kitchen was tiny and only had a small fridge, a sink and a hot plate. In order to have hot water we needed to flip a breaker to turn on the furnace. Yet this quaint little Villa was fully equipped with the latest in High Speed Wi-Fi access. No, I didn’t bring my computer but the fact that it had wireless internet was pretty friggin’ hilarious.

So we tossed down our bags and ran out to a nearby restaurant that was still open for dinner. Rose recommended this small, open-air restaurant overlooking the caldera called Skala. There are several interesting differences inbetween the Santorini restaurants and those in the US. They always put down a paper table cloth over the table right after they seat you. A little more sanitary than wiping up the tables with that dirty disgusting washcloth that US busboys use. They also charge you for the bread they bring out before the meal. There are also the cats which I will go in to more detail on at a later date. Then I fell in love with the metric system.

I don't know if you've ever seen a 500 mL beer before but it is a glorious sight to behold. True it's not that much bigger than a normal pint but it looks gigantic in that bottle. To add to that, they don't use pint glasses but rather give you these smaller, almost juice glasses that end up filling about 4 times per bottle. Of course this brings me to my other observation about beer in Santorini. There are only 3 beers available at most restaurants. There is the Greek beer Mythos. This tastes eerily similiar to Coors Light but it's everywhere. Then there is Heineken and Amstel Light. That's about it. Because we were in Greece we decided to enjoy the Mythos as a cultural thing. In hindsight, the Heineken would've been much better.

The food was amazing and is generally counted as being one of if not the best meal we had in Greece. We both ordered the Lamb Kleftika which was this delicious Lamb, Feta Cheese, Potato and Pepper dish. Being on an island in the middle of the Aegean Sea you're pretty much limited to two main dishes: lamb and seafood. I ate a whole lot of lamb that week. Polishing off the meal with a delicious dessert of baklava and paying a very reasonable price for pretty much ordering as much as we could eat, we headed back to our villa.

After getting through 3 days or so with maybe 10 hours of total sleep, we passed out quick on that comfy bed knowing that we sure picked the right spot for a honeymoon. Now there was just that ominous warning from Rose that we couldn’t flush toilet paper…